The Index's RSS Feed

The Index now has added an RSS 2.0 feed featuring the most recent issue’s articles. To subscribe to the feed use the following link with your favorite RSS reader:

http://www.the-index.org/rss/rssfeed.xml

• What does RSS mean?
• What is the purpose of RSS?
• How do I read/subscribe to an RSS feed?
• How do I place The Index's RSS Feed on my website?

It is currently disputed on what the RSS actually stands for. In today's use "RSS" generally stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Either way it is a computing format for placing a list of recently updated aspects of a website in a single file.

RSS is a way of creating a file that a program or other website can look at and from the file display the most recent information on the website. Arguably the most useful purpose for RSS is for a news or media website such as this one. With RSS a number of programs and or other websites can pull up a summary of the most recent issue's articles. For personal use RSS can be used to collect many news sources in one place. For website owners, they can use scripting to pull the recent articles from The Index site using RSS. To see an example of a website that does this visit The Oshkosh Commons (note the website also uses RSS to pull from a variety of other media sources.)

For personal use, one needs a program that can subscribe to RSS feeds if one wants to read an RSS feed. There are many varieties of readers out there. One such example is Sharp Reader (which The Index has not tested). Some readers also come bundled as a feature with programs whose primary purpose is not to read RSS feeds. Some browsers, such as Firefox are able to subscribe to RSS feeds. After a reader is downloaded and installed The Index feed must be subscribed to using the address at the top of this page.

To learn more about placing The Index's RSS Feed on your website please contact Eric at eharris@the-index.org